Time has gotten away from me. I have no other excuse for not keeping up with the blog. Summers are busy days for playing with my boys. Sometimes, instead of me wearing them out, they wear me out so much, that their nap time becomes mine as well. I can’t complain about that. I do love my naps and that I am able to spend my days at home with them. I know I am lucky. Things do tend to get in the way of my working on my various projects, though. I will attempt to do better.

I think I have found the perfect way to do so. One of my fellow Multicultural Kid Blogs Contributors from Kid World Citizen has created the coolest Diversity Calendar out there (in my opinion) and I can’t wait to start celebrating some holidays that are new to me, but important around the world. Here is the description from their website.

Our Diversity Calendar is a month-by-month, thorough collection of holidays around the world! For the past three years, we have interviewed religious leaders from all major religions, and heavily researched our calendar to assure that the most important holidays have been included (and are happy to include any additional festivals or holidays our readers add in the comments!). This fabulous diversity calendar includes 285 special days including:

•multicultural and ethnic festivals

•religious holy days from all major religions

•environmental days to celebrate and honor our planet

•United Nations International Days such as “Global Youth Service Day“

•fun holidays that celebrate friendship, empathy, and kindness.

Even though it is probably intended more for teachers and homeschoolers, I know that my boys and I can come up with some fun things to do with it. From World Friendship Day to International Talk Like A Pirate Day and so many animal appreciation days, I think this will be a fun project! I’m excited to show them how beautiful the world is in all of it’s celebrations. Want to do it with me? I’d love to find ideas on how to celebrate some of these with you!

Hi!

The kids and I got crafty for Teacher’s Appreciation Day and we wanted to share it with you. I saw this on Pinterest (of course) and had to try. The post I saw used shadow boxes, but that is way to pricey for my budget so we used canvas instead. Here is what you need:

Canvas (I used 8 1/2 X 12 at $7.99 for a 5 pack)

Crayons (2 boxes of 64 count total $3 a box)

Glue Gun and Glue Sticks (I already had these)

Rope of ribbon of your choosing (I used rope I had)

Paint (optional) we used Dot Paint for a pretty finish

Because 3 of the things used are standards in my craft room, we spent a little over $1.50 per gift. Not bad for a days work!

First print or draw the letter you want to use as a guide for your product on a sheet of paper. Copy that same letter onto your canvas. I cut the printed letter and used it as a stencil so they matched.

Second start arranging your crayons to fit the letter and cut them to size. I just used a sharp knife, but you can use a small electric saw if you have one and are comfortable using one. I am not, so I stuck to what I felt comfortable with.

Once you know how you want them, start transferring them over from your sheet to your canvas and gluing them with your glue gun. I recommend doing one at a time. I tried to make a line and quickly setting more than one to go faster, but the glue dried before I could get them over. Oops! One at a time works better for me. Because I had to to them this way, I didn’t let the boys use the glue gun this time around. Way to easy to burn your fingers when you are holding the crayon. Not much room for error, ask my fingers.

Once they were dry, I gave the leftover crayons to the boys and they went to town on the canvas. Here is where our Spanish Lesson came in. We reviewed our alphabet and then named the letters we needed. We reviewed our colors as they picked their crayons and named the ones that were glued. They also got to count the amount of crayons used. Learn & Play, I say!

They loved the idea of drawing with crayons around crayons for their favorite teachers. Sweet Boys! For the finishing touch, we used the dot paint to make the pictures pop.

Once everything was set, I glued a piece of the rope to the top for hanging. Wrapped them up and Ta-Da! Pretty gifts!

You could do everything in a day (though the cutting was the must time consuming task so be prepared for that).

Hope you like it! Happy Teacher Appreciation Day to all of the Fabulous Teachers out there Past and Present!

Life gets crazy sometimes and there is really nothing we can do about it but try to keep up. The saving grace for me is the time I get to spend with my littles. There is just no other feeling like that love you feel when it is just you and your kids, cuddling, chatting and giggling.

One of my favorite times is night time or as we call it “nite-nite time”. I get to cuddle with my little ones individually, read stories, sing songs and TICKLE! I love their giggles and just having that special bonding time with each of them. It fills my heart.

I have sang the same Spanish songs to both boys since they were born. My mother gave me a CD from Grupo Truhui when my first was born and it was like magic. It truly did help him calm down and fall asleep. Not only that, but it worked with my second, too! Because of that, I learned some of the songs and created a mashup version that I now sing to them every night.

The other night, my oldest was playing with the camera on my phone while we were getting ready for bed and decided to make a video of our songs. I wanted to share it with you because it means so much to me and I will cherish this video and our memories always. Sorry for the bad lighting (night time) no makeup look, goofy faces and the not-so-perfect singing from me (I do not claim to be a good singer). But M IS in my opinion, so concentrate on him. He just makes me smile! I hope to one day make a singing video with my little one as well. When I do, maybe I will share it, too!

“A charismatic and unforgettable figure to the very end, Kahlo will forever be remembered for her grace and artistic gifts.” My Modern Met Check out the beautiful pictures of Frida by Gisèle Freund HERE

Hello World! Hope you are having a LOVELY day! This month, I am the host of the blogging carnival for Multicultural Kid Blogs and I couldn’t be happier. Although I am not one to celebrate Valentine’s day, as it turns out I AM a bit of a sucker for love. That means this month’s theme is quite fitting.

In this post I will share with you how my fellow multicultural bloggers and I do just that as well as where you can find them. You will read posts about how people greet each other where they are, how parents show love to their kids, how extended multicultural families show their love, how families kiss, greet each other and much more. So let’s get started.

First, let’s learn how to say I Love You around the world! Check out it out HERE!

Showing love to kids will help them grow up unafraid to show others love as well. Not only that, but it will help them be comfortable enough to show their other emotions as well. Leanna at All Done Monkey has a very cute post on showing kids love that I will definitely try: Monkey Kisses and Dinosaur Hugs: Creative Ways to Show Kids Love

If you speak Spanish or have heard it being spoken, you know that we love our nicknames. They are more than just nicknames to us, though, they are truly affectionate terms. Elisabeth at Spanish Mama wrote this great post on just that: Terms Of Endearment In Spanish-Speaking Countries

I hope you have enjoyed our February Blogging Carnival for Multicultural Kid Blogs! Please follow the group on the MKB site and Facebook page as well as all of our fabulous contributors! We Love to Share the Love All Around Our Beautiful World!

Today is our 10th wedding anniversary! To some it may be just a drop in the bucket, and I sincerely hope it is. I mean, how cool would it be to write a 50th anniversary post one day? I wonder what that will look like. (Hopefully a lot more insightful, ha!) I could get all sappy and tell you all of the wonderful thing I love about my husband or my favorite moments so far but I won’t (SPOILER ALERT: top three are wedding, baby #1, baby #2). I’ll just tell my husband I love him in every way I know how with a little help from my Multicultural Kid Blogs friends.

С годовщиной! for a more specific anniversary (like your 25th for example)

Thank you MKB for teaching me a little bit of your beautiful languages. Check out all of their websites above. They are very much worth the follow. And don’t forget to follow ALL of us at Multicultural Kid Blogs on Facebook!

Happy Anniversary, to my love, my best friend and the man who made me believe IN love!

Like this:

We love going to the theater. We sound so fancy! We’re not really, but we do love to go to family plays. I’ve talked about ZACH Theater before as we have gone to many shows there. Our most recent adventure was to see a play called Tomás and the Library Lady . We as a family LOVED it! It was the perfect play to see at the perfect time. Let me explain.

The play is based on a children’s picture book by the same name and is actually a true story. The main character, Tomás, is the son of migrant workers that travel from Texas to Iowa to find work in the corn fields. Tomás finds a library in town and befriends the librarian who shows him the magical world of books. At the end you find out that Tomás grew up to be a real life famous writer himself (Tomás Rivera) which is fantastic!

Why I loved the play:

It is English AND in Spanish. The library lady teaches Tomás words in english while he teaches her words in Spanish. It is a really wonderful bond they develop. It helps the boys see how awesome it is to speak English and Spanish. Tomás is proud to speak both. This helps the boys be proud, too.

Tomás learns to read in english so he can escape into the many amazing books the library lady introduces him to. M is at that same point right now. We are trying to help want to learn to read and write by showing him how great books are. We have been reading to them all of their lives, of course, and love their books. Just now we are focusing more on word recognition and spelling. It was very inspirational for M to see Tomás struggle with words, yet not give up trying to read them.

They sing! This is always a bonus in my book. We love musicals in this family. Anytime we can go to a play where songs are in both languages we are there! And they were pretty good, too!

It was a simple yet lovely production. ZACH Theater is extremely good at making shows seem so effortless. I’m sure a lot of production goes on behind the scenes, but you wouldn’t know it. There are no big sets, bright lights and fancy costumes. The emphasis is always on the story not the props. This is a great way to get kids to focus on the characters and their words. This play had a trunk, three suitcases and books. That’s it. There were only three people in it. And only one character had a a quick costume change off stage. The other two would just put on a hat/remove it or make a scarf a mustache to switch characters. How cool is that?

All of those points are great on their own, but there is one more thing that just touched my heart fully. It was that it was very similar to my story. Sure the details were different, but the bond was true. When we moved to the states and we started school I was an extremely shy 2nd grader and did not want to go anywhere with the other kids. I didn’t want to sit by myself at lunch or recess so I clung to my teacher, Ms. Jacinto. She could see that I was quickly withdrawing, so she went beyond her scope as teacher to become my friend. She let me have lunch with her and then walked me to the library to meet the librarian, Mrs. Davila. They must have known exactly what I needed because from then on, I would go to the library and help after having lunch with Ms. Jacinto. I would put books away and clean up. In return, Mrs. Davila introduced me to books that I had never heard of and helped me with the words. As an added bonus, I became a pro at the Dewey Decimal System. (Who remembers that?) Most importantly, I learned to love books because of both of them. I hope that we can do that for the boys as well.

The attention and care they gave me for that brief time in my life when they didn’t have to will always hold a place in my heart. I even got teary eyed at the end of the play because it took me back to that lovely little library at Nye Elementary that saved my spirit. I did eventually join the masses and made friends my age, but I don’t think I would’ve found the confidence to be me without both of them.

Anyways, back to the play. GO SEE IT! It is awesome. If you are in Austin it plays at ZACH until February 14th. If not, find a show near you and get the book. The boys left inspired to read and they are speaking in Spanish even more! Thank you, Tomás and the Library Lady and ZACH Theater for being the perfect play at the perfect time!